Hello darlings!

I've had a number of concerned comments private messaged and left on various fics on my LJ and IJ from LiveJournal readers, and it is very nice to be missed, and know people are thinking about me and missing my fiction.

So this post is to let you all know that yes, something is in fact wrong. My mom was diagnosed with metatastic breast cancer to the ribs, spine, hips, skull and sternum on June 25. Since that day, I've been her primary caregiver and advocate in a medical system that is so beyond fucked it's hard to keep all its fucked-upedness all in my mind at any one time.

I also lost my beloved dog Rebel on August 7, unexpectedly. It has left such a gaping hole in my heart and even my sense of who I am that I can't even bring myself to think about it most days.

I'm sleep-deprived, stressed, miserable and full of grief. Now and then I have a flash of creativity or humor, but they never last even long enough to write them down.

It's not my intention to bring everyone down with this post, or to get sympathy, but just to say that I haven't abandoned my ongoing fiction or future stories. In fact, sometimes letting myself spend some time daydreaming in the QAF-verse is all that keeps me from exploding into ten million little pieces.

My mom's prognosis is, in the words of her oncologist, "fair." We're fighting, but the outcome is very unclear at this point.

There are quite a few other shitty things going on, but I'm just too emotionally drained to get into any of them. Send me some love through the cosmos, and if you're following "Directions," just be patient. I've never abandoned a story and I'm not a multi-fandom or fickle kind of gal. I will probably be here writing about those damn people in Pittsburgh when I'm using a walker.

Love,

Xie